Transcending Arab Anti-Semitism and Western Orientalism

Muslim Anti-Semitism and Zionist ŒOrientalism‚: A Philosophical Analysis. NJRPA Conference, Felician College (Nov. 17, 9 am)

If you listen to non-Jewish, non-Arab, non-Muslim Americans talking about „the Arab-Israeli conflict,‰ you‚re apt to get the impression that the conflict is something unique to that region and its culture, so that however tragic it is, it‚s both foreign and irrelevant to us. Listen, however, to politically-active Arabs, Muslims, and Jews in this country and you hear something else entirely. Listen long enough, and the violence of what they say about each other convinces you that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a faraway phenomenon taking place somewhere else, but a rhetorical dans macabre taking place right here.

In this paper, I discuss the scholarly and journalistic (but mostly journalistic) war of words that has given this conflict articulate expression in the past few years, with special emphasis on the past two or three years. What we find on both sides, I argue, is a rhetoric of blackmail and recrimination that functions to block each sides‚ recognition of the legitimate claims of the other. I end with some brief comments about the psycho-political mechanism behind this rhetoric, and offer some modest prescriptions for dealing with it.

Muslim Anti-Semitism In recent writing by American Jews of Zionist sympathies˜from as far to the left as Tikkun and as far to the right as Commentary˜one finds Jews gesturing with increasing alarm at the rise of a „new anti-Semitism‰ of specifically Arab/Muslim provenance, with some going so far as to speak of the possibility of a „Second Holocaust‰ of Arab/Muslim authorship. Some Jews have taken sharp exception to such claims, and most Arabs/Muslims have taken offense at it, but there is no denying its currency in Jewish discourse, particularly in the US. One finds versions of it in scholarship, in journalism, on university campuses, in synagogues, among civic leaders, and all over the Internet. It is, in short, a subject of deep consternation, anger, and fear, bordering at times on panic.

Tikkun

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I disagree with the author on one or two points, but overall he's right; there are two forms of racism involved in the conflict, and both must be addressed.

Thank you very much for putting it before us. It is well worth the reading: the fellow gores all available oxen, and to good effect indeed.

. :kick:

That this piece does not seem to be drawing more notice. Perhaps that is because its author has presented a very reasonable argument and analysis, in which there is little to quarrel over.

I think he is a bit unfair to Mr. Said in pursuit of his thesis,
but I think his thesis is sound.

I have considerable skepticism that this sort of rational examination of the
situation will bring about any change, unfortunately.

Thank you for posting it, Darranar.